


Eros/Thanatos

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, F/M, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Porn as Character Study, Threesome, Voyeurism, antipasto, that kind of party fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:42:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4208346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another life, in another universe, Bedelia observes and participates in that kind of party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eros/Thanatos

“My husband is very particular about the way I taste,” Bedelia says, her silver tongue folding her horror into a spear by which to poke and prod Hannibal. Sharp words will not protect her and red wine makes for a flimsy and treacherous armor, but they are the only weapons at her disposal at the moment and they will have to do.

Dimmond unwittingly, lewdly refashions her blow into an invitation that takes her and Hannibal both by surprise. “Is it that kind of party?” he asks, with an insouciance she is sure women and men from Oxfordshire to Tuscany find charming. But not her, not tonight, not when death looms across the table from them and tastes as real and as slippery as the oyster she just swallowed.

Hannibal’s reptilian eyes crinkle at the corner with something that could be called amusement and he suggestively raises his eyebrows at her. She bluffed with a half-hearted hand and now he is upping the ante. “I defer to my wife in such matters, Mr. Dimmond. As any considerate husband should.”

Both men turn to her—Dimmond, louche and wolfish; Hannibal, calmly curious. Bedelia takes a sip of marsala and summons strength from her ever-dwindling reserve. “I believe it’s considered rude to discuss dessert barely halfway into the entrée, gentlemen,” she says.

*****

It’s a short walk from the dining room to the sitting room, a brief pause in their moveable feast. Hannibal has his back to them, pouring a  _digestivo_  of iridescent chartreuse—it looks like poison and tastes like a fever dream. Dimmond hangs close to her elbow, casually touching the small of her back, shameless in his attempt to make it “that kind of party.”

“I didn’t catch your name Christian name, Mrs. Jakov.”

 _Because I didn’t give it to you._ “Simonetta,” Bedelia says, delighting in the way Hannibal’s hand trembles at the mention of his mother’s name as he pours the chartreuse. If they are going to do this, she is not going to make it in any way easy for him. And it’s not like he’s short of any number of Oedipal-related urges toward her.

There’s a reason you’re not supposed to fuck your psychiatrist.

“ _Enchanté_ , Simonetta,” Dimmond says, planting a chaste kiss to her fingertips. His eyes rake longingly over Hannibal’s form. “What a charming and accommodating wife you have, sir.”

Hannibal’s eyes burn back at her. “She’s not always as accommodating as I would like her to be.”

Dimmond ventures on, a fool, blissfully unaware of the quicksand on which he treads. “I’ve always thought married life to be a tedious affair, frightfully dull. But you two make it look downright thrilling. How long have you been married?”

“Five years,” Bedelia answers. It is not the date of their first meeting, but another more macabre anniversary.

“We’ve known each other longer than that. We were friends first,” Hannibal amends.

Dimmond swills his drink and beams at both of them. “And yet you still look like you want to devour each other.”

“My wife is a delicacy I never tire of,” Hannibal says, a threat masquerading as a compliment.

“But occasionally you like to sample other dishes. Variety being the spice of life and all.” Dimmond sets aside his drink and moves toward Hannibal, threading his fingers through the buttons of his vest. He tugs Hannibal down for a slow, provocative kiss, one that Hannibal eagerly responds to. An unexpected dart of desire shoots through Bedelia, and she finds herself unable to turn away.

Dimmond and Hannibal break their kiss and slowly their eyes travel back to her. Dimmond reaches out a hand and she tentatively accepts it. He wastes no time in drawing her between them. Hannibal’s arms circle around her in a loose embrace, holding her, as Dimmond brushes his lips against hers. She pulls away a bit at first, until her back meets Hannibal’s chest, and she is trapped between both men. Dimmond coaxes her mouth open with gentle kisses, soft and tender, delicacies she has not herself had in so long, she had forgotten how sweet they could be. Something warm sluices down her spine and she feels her very bones melting, so close to surrender. But it is the press of Hannibal’s growing erection against her backside that sets off an alarm of panic inside her brain, and she breaks the kiss, breaks the spell.

They are not supposed to do this with one another. They are especially not supposed to do it in front of a stranger, no matter how handsome.

Hannibal releases her and makes her apologies. “My wife in general prefers to observe at these little parties. Though with the right amount of persuasion, she may be inclined to participate.”

Dimmond grins, not dismayed in the slightest. It has been clear from the beginning that his attractions are primarily to Hannibal and not to her. “Then we must do our best to be very persuasive.”

*****

They adjourn to the bedroom, and Bedelia from her vantage point on the divan has a ringside seat to Dimmond and Hannibal’s performance. She pretends disinterest at first, attempts to observe as if she was watching a documentary, a frightfully absurd National Geographic special on the mating habits of the European cannibal in his natural habitat. The scene unfolds before her, two beautiful men sweat-slick with desire, the most exquisite private pornography.

They undress one another, Hannibal careful, Dimmond all but leaping out of his dress shirt and trousers like an untrained puppy. They kiss, their naked bodies intertwine, a tangle of hardened muscle and virile masculinity like a scene from a Grecian amphora brought to life. Dimmond makes deliberate, exaggerated eye contact with her as he kisses her “husband” full on the lips and toys with the head of Hannibal’s phallus, an actor mugging for the camera. Hannibal pointedly ignores her, choosing to make their guest the sole focus of his erotic attention, all the better to feed the illusion that she is merely observing, not participating.

Bedelia has never much understood the appeal of pornography with its garish presentation of disembodied cocks and silicone-augmented breasts. Many years ago a lover had presented her with a tasteful black and white collection of erotic photography, men and women in various positions and permutations in an attempt to draw her out. She had treasured it, the way it allowed her to project her desires onto the silent forms, to write her own fantasies onto them. Watching Hannibal take Dimmond’s marble slick cock between his lips, watching Dimmond in turn arch his back in a feline ecstasy awakened that same deep pleasure she had first felt looking at the portraits a thousandfold.

Bedelia drains her glass of chartreuse and feels the liquid burn down her throat. Her hands are comfortably numb, the right absently brushing against the side of her breast. Her nipples have grown sensitive and hard and she had not even realized the moment when she started pressing her thighs together. She’s both more intoxicated and more aroused than she ever intended to be this evening.

Hannibal fellates Dimmond expertly, plays him like a sonata, as Dimmond writhes and moans beneath his touch. Bedelia knows Hannibal is as likely to snap Dimmond’s neck as he is to give him an orgasm, but can’t tear her eyes away, poised on the knife point between arousal and terror. Dimmond comes quickly, hands tearing at Hannibal’s hair, moaning her “husband’s” false name. Bedelia nearly moans herself—for a moment it is as if she were the one being devoured by Hannibal’s tongue, her juices the ones he was licking from his lips, savoring to the last drop.

Hannibal wastes no time in taking his own pleasure with Dimmond. He bends him over her dressing table and Dimmond eagerly presents his ass to be fucked. She both pities him for his blissful ignorance and envies him for it at the same time.

In a feat of prestidigitation, Hannibal procures massage oil from she knows not where, making Bedelia wonder how long Hannibal has had such an item in his possession and if its intended recipient had been her. She lets herself give in to the aesthetics of it all—glistening oil running between the taught cheeks of Dimmond’s ass, Hannibal’s elegant, long fingers spreading him wide and teasing him open. Bedelia crosses and recrosses her legs, obvious wetness pooling between her thighs.

Hannibal is thrusting into Dimmond now, slow, agonizing thrusts that probably give their guest a hint of pleasure but not enough. From the angle with which she watches them, Dimmond’s dark curls plastered against his face, it could almost appear like Hannibal is fucking Will Graham. She wonders if Hannibal is aware of the passing resemblance, and if so, will it damn the man or save him.

Were he really Will Graham, Bedelia might have been more inclined to participate. There was something that drew her to Will, a kinship of trauma, a solidarity she couldn’t deny.

Were he really Will Graham, Bedelia doubts Hannibal would have been inclined to share.

*****

The young man presses her down on their obscenely sumptuous bed, eager as he is for a taste of “Simonetta.” She lets him remove her underwear, but not her dress, or her stockings, or her heels, and settle between her thighs. Sharing Dimmond between them allows them to maintain the flimsy fiction that they have not crossed this boundary, that they have not profaned this most sacred of professional sacraments. Hannibal has taken her place on the divan as observer, but Bedelia feels his gaze heavy on her like an overcoat even with her eyes closed.

With Hannibal, observation is always participation.

Dimmond applies himself with enthusiasm, but not alacrity, licking and sucking at her clitoris erratically, but without the sure steady pressure necessary to make her come. Bedelia suspects the last time he performed this particular sex act on a woman Italy was still using the lira. It’s almost enough, given the state she’s in and how very long it’s been.

(It’s not enough)

Bedelia arches her back and runs her fingers through Dimmond’s curls, letting forth a series of coloratura moans that are a trifle too sharp and too fast to be authentic. Her lover is not enough of a connoisseur to tell the difference.

*****

Bedelia undresses in front of her vanity as Hannibal escorts Dimmond to the door, exchanging her confining couture dress for a loose, flowing silk kimono. She is half-listening, half-not listening for the snap of bone, the slice of a knife whistling through the air before sliding in to human flesh. It is a relief and a great surprise when the only sound she hears is the closing of their heavy wood door and a single pair of footsteps retreating back to their bedroom.

Bedelia removes her earring with a near-trembling hand, catching Hannibal’s reflection in the mirror. “You let him go.”

Hannibal favors her with a twisted smile. “What would you have me do, Bedelia?” It’s a question for which she has no answer, only an assumption, and he knows it. Hannibal swaggers toward her, dressing gown half open at the waist. “Mr. Dimmond bought himself a stay of execution. It would be very rude to dispatch a man who brought us both so much pleasure.” He pauses dramatically, letting his eyes lock with hers in the mirror. “Or at least one who brought me so much pleasure. You told Mr. Dimmond another half-truth. Why?”

Bedelia shrugs and begins to brush out her hair aggressively. “Mr. Dimmond had more eagerness than expertise. I did not wish to hurt his feelings.”

Hannibal steps closer and rests himself at the edge of her vanity table. “Do you often feel the need to be so dishonest with your lovers?”

Bedelia feels a blush creep from her collar into her cheeks. She decides to be blunt. “Is faking an orgasm something you consider rude?”

Hannibal chuckles. “Well, were I in Mr. Dimmond’s place tonight, yes, I would have. Though, were I in Mr. Dimmond’s place tonight, I do not think you would have needed to.”

Bedelia merely blinks back at him, trying to think of anything but the unquenched heat between her thighs and how much she desperately would like the privacy to relieve it. “If you will excuse me, I’d like to take a bath.”

As she rises to leave, Hannibal catches her wrist, not ungently. “Everyone has had their pleasure tonight, save you, Bedelia,” he tuts. “What’s to be done about that?”

She feels the core of herself shiver and shake, trembling like a rusted steel girder in an earthquake, but holds firm. “Nothing.”

“No?” He pulls her closer, lets his hands ghost up and down her silk-covered back. “The female orgasm is so much more complex than the male. It is very psychological. Most women require a certain amount of safety and comfort in addition to sexual stimulation in order to successfully climax.”

“I just discovered you have been sweetening me for slaughter. I believe you have your answer.”

“Perhaps, Bedelia. Or perhaps you believe you do not deserve pleasure.”

Bedelia huffs and turns from him, but does not pull away. “I can experience  _pleasure_  as you so euphemistically term it, Hannibal.”

“Alone,” he admonishes, but Bedelia is too brittle and too sour now to blush. “Am I correct to assume Mr. Dimmond is the first lover you’ve taken since your premature retirement five years ago?”

Bedelia’s cheeks burn and her blood rages in spite of herself. “How did you know?”

“You cut every other possible pleasure out of your life—you stopped attending the symphony, abandoned the career you loved, rarely left your home. I suspect your personal life suffered as well.” He pauses, then says with quiet solemnity, “You got away with murder and have been punishing yourself ever since.”

Bedelia feels tears well up in her eyes and does not even bother to wipe them away. “I didn’t want anyone to…see me…after what I’d done.”

Hannibal looks back at her through the mirror, eyes like dark pools, good for drowning in. “Lonely, isn’t it? Wearing a person suit.”

“Is that why you did all of this to me? So that I would understand what it felt like to be you?” Bedelia shoots back, exasperated.

Hannibal merely smiles, and reaches with his index finger to lift a lock of hair behind her ear. “It has been difficult to watch you starve yourself this way.” His breath is hot against her cheek, and it sends a quicksilver shiver of arousal straight to her pelvis. “I can help you if you ask me to, Bedelia.”

It is the same devil’s bargain all over again. “Help me,” she sighs into his chest.

*****

Unlike Anthony Dimmond, Hannibal is excruciatingly patient in his seduction. His fingertips graze the curls of her hair, his lips plant soft kisses to her temples, her chin, her shoulders, bypassing her lips altogether, calming her and warming her from the outside in. Firm hands cup her breasts through silk before working their way inside to tease and tweak her hardened nipples. She moans aloud, genuinely this time, the swaying in her knees altogether too real.

Her kimono is untied, but not removed. Dark eyes survey her body hungrily, though Bedelia knows not what they hunger for.

He guides her to the upholstered armchair he favors for reading, holding her fingertips as if leading her out on the floor for a waltz. He uses his broad warm palms to spread her wide open, draping her legs on either arm of the chair, and kneels before her, a lion at rest.

Fingertips travel up and down her legs, from her sensitive thighs to the arches of her feet, in a way that manages to be arousing instead of ticklish, blood warming the surface of her skin. “What I know and Mr. Dimmond did not is how much you enjoy control. Or at least the illusion of it,” he says, with an air of undergraduate rakishness that is utterly foreign and utterly becoming on him.

“You are pleased he failed to please me. So you can now succeed where he did not.” It’s so transparently masculine and  _normal_   Bedelia almost wants to laugh.

“It’s rude for a guest to demand a delicacy the host has been saving for a special occasion.”

Bedelia tenses. “So, I’m a particularly rare vintage you’ve been ageing on a high shelf.”

He presses his lips to her inner thigh, left—right—left—higher and higher like climbing roses until his mouth is mere centimeters from her cunt. His only answer is to plunge his tongue deep within her folds, causing whatever remained of rational thought to pack up and desert her.

He knows where to suck and where to stroke, where to apply firm pressure and where to lightly tease. When to thrust two fingers inside of her, and how to curl them until she digs her fingernails into his scalp, high with bliss. But it is his dark eyes staring into hers, wicked and merry, sincere and earnest in their desire for her to let go and come that begin to unravel the knot within her, tied so hard and so tight for so long. Bedelia feels herself sliding toward ecstasy, feels the inevitable climb of orgasm build slowly. Her thighs shake and her pulse quivers and it’s the scrape of an incisor against her labia that sends her over the edge with a scream that nearly splits her soul.

“How did I taste?” she asks huskily, provocatively, unable to resist.

Hannibal rises up off his knees slowly, her juices glossing his lips. “Taste for yourself,” he says, gathering her in his arms to devour her with a kiss.

She tastes mortal but alive.

*****

They lie entwined, twin serpents, in the gathering dark. She feels loose and limber, raw and stretched and torn in a way that is both painful and pleasant. Hannibal gazes down on her tenderly, his sinister features made all the more strange by sweetness.

He is not safe for her and she is not safe for him. But they are comfortable with each other and that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Eros and Thanatos are both terms from Freudian psychology. Eros is loosely defined as the drive toward life, pleasure, sex, and propagation. Thanatos is the so called "death-drive," the compulsion to engage in risk-seeking behavior, and to repeat past trauma. 
> 
> (/not that kind of doctor, tho.)
> 
> If you liked the story, get on twitter and #savehannibal so I can write more porn! You can find me on tumblr as bedannibal-lectaurier where I fangirl Bedelia shamelessly.


End file.
